Neil Pretty - Leading Beyond Fear

Want a team that tells you the truth before the market does? We brought back culture architect Neil Pretty to mark the launch of Leading Beyond Fear and to unpack a practical path to psychological safety that goes beyond buzzwords. We talk about how to see real-time reality, reduce unforced errors, and build a culture where dissent is data, not danger.

• Click HERE to order Leading Beyond Fear
• Click HERE for Aristotle Performance's website
• Click HERE for Neil's LinkedIn page
• Click HERE for Neil's first episode on The Bosshole® Chronicles

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Transcript

Welcome Back And Book Launch

John Broer 0:04

Well, hello, Sara Best. What's going on? How are you doing?

Sara Best 0:08

Hey John Broer. I'm doing real good. It's good, always good, to be in studio with you. How are you today, sir?

John Broer 0:15

I'm excellent, thank you. Uh, and I agree with you. I I love the episodes we get to do together. And today we have Oh, somebody familiar with the podcast who has been on before, an amazing individual. He's got a book publishing today. Today. So, Sara, tell us who we're talking to today.

Sara Best 0:34

All right, John, we are talking to Neil Pretty. He is a founder of Aristotle Performance and the book, Leading Beyond Fear, the formula for psychological safety, adaptability, and growth, is in fact a field guide for leaders. It's it's meant to be put in simple terms. It's about building psychological safety. Uh the things that that he's gonna share with us here, John, are essential given the time that we're in. You know, these very turbulent, uncertain, crazy economic, geopolitical, all this stuff, it's it's really, I think it can be a beacon and a very simple path to follow for our leaders. I am super excited to dig in. Neil, by the way, um, such a seasoned advisor to leaders. He's a culture architect, among other things. Fascinating human, very intelligent. I can't wait to hear more.

John Broer 1:27

All right, let's jump in. The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Sara Best 1:56

Neil, pretty, it is so good to have you back on The Bosshole Chronicles. Welcome.

Neil Pretty 2:01

Thank you so much for having me. It's it's a real pleasure to be here. Always happy to see your faces and uh chat with you two folks.

Sara Best 2:08

Well, and John reminded us it's been a little over a year since you last were featured as a guest on the podcast. John, what did we talk about back then?

John Broer 2:18

Well, it was it was called the title was The Power of Intellectual Friction. Great episode. We will put that in the show notes because Neil, I think you, as you always do, you give you give not only us, but also our listeners some really creative and and I would say edgy ways to think about things in the workplace. And I I think we're gonna be talking about some more of that stuff today.

Why Psychological Safety Matters Now

Neil Pretty 2:39

Yeah, I imagine so. Yeah. I mean, I you know, I I I try to be interesting.

Sara Best 2:45

Well, as we ended last time, about a year ago, we said, hey, what's what's up next for you, Neil? And you said, I'm working on a book. And lo and behold, the book is here. So we are so excited to feature you today talking about uh your book that will be dropping, I believe, on March 10th. Your book is here, Leading Beyond Fear, the Formula for Psychological Safety, Adaptability, and Growth.

unknown 3:12

Yeah.

Sara Best 3:12

And I I think our subject matter today is going to be so welcome to our listeners for a variety of reasons, mostly because what you're gonna talk about is helpful. The things in your book, this is a field guide. So, Mia, um, let's let's turn it over to you. What was the impetus behind the book?

Neil Pretty 3:31

So there were several. Uh, one was I've always wanted to write a book. There's always been a book or two in me. You know, I'm a man of many words. So, and I write a lot. So there was sort of that natural innate desire to do it. And then uh within the community of sort of senior practitioners that we'd collaborated with around the globe, there was a movement to create a psychological safety field guide. That was the initial focus. And that was actually the working title of this book was the Psych Safety Field Guide. And through writing the book and through the publication process, it was like this title doesn't really cover it. This isn't really all that is in here. Um, it remains a field guide, but it's really how do you get beyond the stuck places that leaders and practitioners uh in the book are referred to them as culture architects, people like yourself and myself, who are, you know, turning to resources. What do we need to train people on? What do we need to give people? What kind of frameworks actually help? Psychological safety, as I've as I've mentioned in several other domains and in this one, is is the problem after the problem. We understand it's essential, but it's an outcome of our assessment of our environment, and it we make that assessment based on a bunch of factors. So, what are the skills that go into creating those conditions? So I think that's where the focus was. And for me too, I think there's two other motivating factors. One was when I was a leader, when I started in a leadership position more than 25 years ago, which I know I don't look that old, but I'm starting to get some, you know, starting to get some evidence.

Sara Best 5:11

You did not look that old. Yeah, I can attest.

Neil Pretty 5:14

But um, when I started in a leadership position long time ago, you know, it was where where do you turn? What kind of skills do I need? How the hell do I do this? Was just kind of a constant question. And I know that that's an ongoing question for lots of leaders. And then the same experience happened when we started, when I started working with organizations, trying to support them, trying to support people in HR, trying to support leaders, trying to support executives. Where do I point them? What do they need? And when I started that, I wish I had a book in my hand that I could have turned to that was a little more easy, easily accessible. Uh, The Dance of Change is a pretty thick book. The the the fifth element or the the fifth discipline field guide is a pretty thick book. Yeah you know, and and they're amazing, they're spectacular. But from a day-to-day, keep it on your desk kind of perspective, that's what was missing for me.

Sara Best 6:14

You wrote the book You Wish You Had at that time.

Neil Pretty 6:17

That's right.

Sara Best 6:18

Yeah, we we've talked about psychological safety. It it's now being featured across all the platforms in many articles by anyone who's writing about important things in the workplace. Just for our listeners' benefit, why is psychological safety so important now, like in this time that we're in?

Neil Pretty 6:39

The simplest way that I like to frame this is it gives you access to real-time reality. It gives you access to the perspectives of the people who you're paying to give you perspectives. Complex problems require perspective. If people can't speak up, share their ideas, share their concerns, you know, they can't do those things. Yeah. You can't have insight into complex problems. And as a result, you can often end up trying to solve the wrong problem, you know, let alone solving any problems at all.

John Broer 7:14

Right.

Defining Safety Beyond Buzzwords

Neil Pretty 7:14

So psychological safety is really essential for complex problem solving within the conditions of you know, uh wicked environments, you know, like we're often in now, that are constantly changing. You know, there uh uh there's new technology, there's AI, there's tons of ideas. So psychological safety is essential to navigate that with other people.

John Broer 7:42

One of the things, Neil, that I have since we got working with you and we became a implementer of the fearless organization scan, the thing that it is is, I don't want to say it's amusing, but it's interesting how people just have glommed on to the phrase or the term psychological safety, but they don't know what they're talking about. I mean, they it sounds, it sounds great. It sounds like you have this, you know, highly insightful idea about the dynamics of the workplace. And when somebody says, well, we're really working on our psychological safety, I'll say, Well, what do you mean by that? Because I know what it is, and I I'll share with you our definition, but it's something that's, I mean, it's been around the discipline itself, it's not new. I think more and more people are realizing now that this is something that is at the essence of organizational and team performance. And without it, you can, you should not be surprised when you have more chaos or disengagement or turnover in an organization. Your organization has been so transformational in terms of how we have introduced it as part of our work with our clients.

Neil Pretty 8:49

Yeah, I think what you're sort of reminding me of is one of my favorite definitions of the word trust, is a reasonable ability to predict the future. And in the book, I talk about like the primary function of the human brain is to organize our behavior in anticipation of future events.

John Broer 9:10

Okay.

Neil Pretty 9:11

If you have that as your core understanding of other human beings, you understand the human being at a primal level that allows you to acknowledge the impact of behavior and the impact of systems, the impact of culture on those human beings. If you show up to a meeting and say something negative or even sounds negative after you know, a person contributes, everybody's aware that that's happened. Everybody's aware that that's how they're going to be received, and they can trust that that's how you're gonna show up in the future. So they will organize their behavior to avoid that problem, and then you have a cycle that is complete. They have now organized their behavior to function within that system, and now you have to do the uh work of unraveling that. So when I I agree, so when people say we're working on your psychological safety, it's like the amount of times that's actually happening is very, very low.

John Broer 10:17

Very small. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Sara Best 10:19

So that explains to me, you know, I've often heard leaders being frustrated about people not speaking up. So this means we can tell them, hey, you don't have to blame the people, it's always their fault. Like they had a chance to speak up. Uh, we've told them that you know we're open to their ideas and we need, you know, we need to know what they think.

John Broer 10:42

Yeah.

Sara Best 10:43

That's yeah, that's a scientific way to help leaders understand it's gonna happen. Like if the behavior is there, the team will organize around that lashing out or that emotional display, that negative emotion, whatever it is. And it's there isn't gonna be communication to the degree that we need it. I I think that's great.

Neil Pretty 11:05

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, the the reality is that most people are employees. Yes. And even entrepreneurs, you know, you're for the for a large cross-section of entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, you're in a position where you have to make nice.

Sara Best 11:24

Yes.

Neil Pretty 11:25

You have to make it work with people who you know, you can't really tell them the whole truth. And that's what we're trying to unravel. Because if you don't have the whole truth, if you don't have the whole perspective, something is missing that is essential for better work together.

John Broer 11:40

Is is that what you would refer to falling in the category of impression management?

Neil Pretty 11:45

Yeah.

John Broer 11:46

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Neil Pretty 11:47

Yeah, impression management is like the the the method.

The Update Mindset Explained

John Broer 11:51

Yeah. Yep. So you've created this field guide, and before we hit record, we asked Neil, hey, like let's let's focus in on three really critical things that our listeners should take away from this conversation. First thing you shared was something called an update mindset. I'm intrigued by this. So, Neil, take us through that. What tell us about the update mindset and why it is so necessary.

Neil Pretty 12:16

Essentially, this is my modern take on skepticism.

unknown 12:21

Okay.

Neil Pretty 12:22

The skeptic says, I can't know anything 100%. And that fundamental framing puts you in a position of humility to ask better questions and to invite new information because then you're not so set on one solution or one conclusion that you can't change your mind. Uh, I've been in meetings where people have actually gotten mad at me for changing my mind based off of new information. So that's how entrenched it is that I'm and you know, I'm sitting there going, Yeah, I changed my mind because new information came in and old me was wrong. Uh-huh.

Sara Best 13:05

Wait, are you saying you you learned something and you adapted in that moment?

Neil Pretty 13:09

Bingo, exactly. This is like this is shame on me, right? It's like, how dare you? How dare you learn and adapt. So yeah, I think, and I think that needs to become uh that needs to become a point of pride instead of a problem.

Sara Best 13:25

That's so good. I'm thinking about so many leaders I know, and even just people in my family, they need to know. They have this insatiable need to have understanding of what is because it brings them certainty and it brings them a sense of stability and control. Hello, we are in an environment where we will never know all there is to know. Maybe it's always been that way, Neil. I don't know what you think on that, but this is key that in a world where it would be an impossibility to know all there is to know about a decision or a path or a vision or a strategy, the update mindset you're talking about is the way we move with the knowledge, we grow, we expand, powerful.

Neil Pretty 14:07

Yeah. So I don't talk about this next example particularly in the book. It definitely hit the cutting room floor quick, but it is essential to I think understanding this is there's a category of people called hyper predictors. They're the best at predicting future outcomes. And the number one thing that they have in common is a willingness to take small pieces of data and update their opinion. They are decoupled from being right, and as a result, they predict the future more effectively. That's the irony of people who are stuck with their idea when and who aren't curious about other perspectives, who can't see this as you know, our world is unknown and uncertain. So they try to say, This is my path, and I'm gonna stick on this path, come hell or high water. And I don't care if you have a different perspective or you have a you know spidey senses that something's wrong. Your intuition is that's a feeling, so I don't care about that in business.

John Broer 15:11

Right.

Neil Pretty 15:12

All of that information goes away, and as a result, their future is actually less certain.

unknown 15:18

Yeah.

Neil Pretty 15:18

Because they're attached more often than not to the wrong outcome. They're making a bad bet because they're gambling instead of updating.

Sara Best 15:28

Is that an ego thing, Neil? Or is it something else or a combination of ego and what's your take?

Neil Pretty 15:36

I I think there's a few things. So I think crit critical, uh, critical thinking is taught in schools, but skepticism is not. So I think foundationally being right is rewarded. Changing your mind is not rewarded. Like I just mentioned, I got literally yelled at in a meeting, you know, for changing my mind. So uh I think another element is in organizations, identifying the problem, coming up with a solution, and then solving it is rewarded, and that's a very short cycle, or can be a very short cycle. So that's rewarded. Changing your mind is not rewarded. So I think there's systems and structures and sort of habits that we have in addition to ego. It's uncomfortable to change your mind. It's uncomfortable to say, you know, I was wrong. That's uncomfortable.

Sara Best 16:30

I wouldn't know about that, but I believe you.

Neil Pretty 16:33

I mean, I I I personally have made it in a way I've kind of tried to flip that for myself. How do I actively see where I might be wrong?

Sara Best 16:44

Yeah.

John Broer 16:45

Right. Uh well, so this is the antithesis of classic bosshole behavior. I mean, when well, think about that. You if you you could you could actually, again, you could be perceived as not hanging having the courage of your convictions because you're waffling or you're vacillating on this decision, whereas that should be celebrated, realizing that I'm getting new information that's actually improving my perspective. But you will get a manager who will, to his or her last breath, stay with a decision because they don't want to be looked at as weak or inconsistent or something like that, and it blows up. That is a big change. That is a big, again, change in mindset. Because we have just real quick, we have a client that is really working on when you say um update mindset, they're focusing on growth mindset. Um yours, I like, I like the way you framed it because growth is good, uh, but update means I'm my I'm literally the programming is I'm being I'm reprogramming. I'm I'm thinking about this entirely different. I'm growing at the same time, but it's going to actually influence the way I land on a particular issue. So I that is incredibly powerful.

Neil Pretty 17:57

Well, and I think it's also powerful if you think about your own experience with updates and software. Yeah, software land, new software comes up and you get it, and every once in a while they throw it out and start again.

John Broer 18:09

Yeah.

unknown 18:09

Yeah.

Learning, AI, And Sensemaking

Neil Pretty 18:10

And you're like, oh, I really got to learn this whole new thing. And it's like, and it sucks, and you hate it. And you know, there's people still using the legacy outlook, and they got it, and but like they're missing out on a bunch of functionality.

John Broer 18:22

Yeah.

Neil Pretty 18:23

And everybody goes, You aren't using all this new functionality that we it has available to us? Like, you're behind. And that's where a lot of people live is in that past version that we know doesn't have the functionality of the new version. And the result is they're stuck, and the people who have advanced have not are not.

Sara Best 18:42

Well, I think I have two questions. One is, what's the cost of that being stuck and and not having the update mindset? What are we losing out on? And the second question is, you said it's necessary, which I 100% believe. Is it learnable?

Neil Pretty 18:57

It's absolutely a learnable trait. You just have to see it as worthy to learn. And that is what uh like you know, we sort of talked about a little bit before the podcast. Um, I'm uh I'm at that xennial elder millennial cusp where you know pre-internet childhood, you know, pre-social media, high school, and then social media hit as you know, that that kind of era.

John Broer 19:26

Right. Yeah.

Neil Pretty 19:27

So massive social and technological shifts all at the same time. What we learned was press buttons because and figure it out because you aren't gonna break anything. You know, so there's a whole generation that's just like, I'm gonna figure it out.

Sara Best 19:41

Yeah.

Neil Pretty 19:42

And that created the conditions for that capacity to feel easy, but really that's what you need to do. So that that um uh what I said earlier about trust, that ability to reasonably predict future outcomes. If you try and learn something new here, learn something new there, learn something new here, learn something new there, what you learn is that you're actually really good at learning. And that that's not some sort of passive thing that just comes in, beams into the brains of others. It's exposure. It's putting that hat on and saying, I'm gonna try out different things and see what happens. The cost that you mentioned, so I like AI is coming in like crazy. It is a white collar problem because it is rapidly replacing. You know, we're we're working with something right now where it really looks like we're gonna replace, you know, four or five hundred thousand dollars of investment in an exceedingly short period of time. Oh, 30 hours.

John Broer 20:48

Right.

Neil Pretty 20:48

You know, so like that kind of power is very uh hard to ignore. And people are really thinking like if they ignore AI, it's gonna not replace them. And the reality is it's it's already happening. Yeah, yeah. So that's true. Your capacity to learn is essential and use that tool and be engaged in that tool, in part because what you lose is the ability to identify where the gaps are, and then fill your usefulness in with those into those gaps. Um, you know, great places to work reached out and asked me for what I thought my top skill of 2026 would be. And, you know, the lots of the sort of standard ones hit the list, you know, empathy, things like that, you know, some really great things that are essential, but mine was sense making because there's so much noise. You need not just a skill, but a process to get to what's essential problems to solve, essential direction to go in, what noise to listen to, and what noise to ignore. That's critical. And I think that having an update mindset, having Having a capacity to learn for yourself, being able to understand that people are affected by the system and the situations around them. That kind of metacognition and that kind of perspective is essential for leaders to be able to create teams that can perform in those environments, anyways.

John Broer 22:20

So that sounds to me like the leaders of today and tomorrow have to begin to cultivate a whole new set of skills. And that was another area you said we got to dive into. So tell us a little bit more about the skills that are going to be necessary.

Neil Pretty 22:38

Yeah. So one of the things that I do in the book is effectively make the case for a large difference between leadership and management. To be a good leader, you do need to be able to manage, but you don't have to be a leader to be a successful manager. But leadership requires skills, you know, like we talk about prioritization. Prioritization is ordering things in the right order and the right sequence. But discernment is a much older term, but it's a skill that's even more essential because it places value on things. It's a process of creating an understanding of high value to low value, and then you can prioritize after. So I think one of the things that differentiates leaders and managers is discernment. So discernment is an essential skill that I think is necessary. And I think some of the other skills that are essential for leaders to actually engage teams at a high level now are skills like facilitation. If you can't facilitate a basic meeting, you can't facilitate an effective decision-making process. So in the book, I talk about uh decision-making process. This is what a good decision-making process should look like, feel like, sound like, how the conversation should flow, you know, those kinds of things. And that's nested right in there with other essential skills that leaders need to be able to engage in that you don't necessarily need as a manager, um, but they're essential skills to learn if you want to manage better too.

John Broer 24:10

Sure. Okay.

Sara Best 24:12

I have a question about discernment. It's it's a term that I've heard in like religious community or at church, you know, it's time to discern your future or discern your path, or for the business folks for our listeners, how would you find it define, excuse me, how would you define discernment in this context?

Neil Pretty 24:34

Yeah, so it's it's interesting because it is a term that's often used in those contexts because it's framed more like uh divination, you know.

Sara Best 24:42

Yes, yes.

Neil Pretty 24:42

Like right. And to a degree, that's actually useful framing because what you're doing is saying, you know, my business partner and I, you know, Jason, uh uh we were just on a call where we were talking about several elements of what we could be doing, should be doing. And it was this has the most essential value, we should focus here. That's not prioritization, that's understanding what is going to be predictably providing the most value of effort in the future. Yeah.

Sara Best 25:14

That's there's a distinction there.

Neil Pretty 25:16

Yeah. There's there's a significant distinction. And uh uh to give you an example, a friend of mine is part of uh uh an organization that's focused on men's health, and they have you know 20 different initiatives, they have no capacity, leadership capacity to say these are the one to three things. So now everything's important. So now they're trying to solve everything, they can't do it.

unknown 25:42

Right.

Neil Pretty 25:43

That's not a prioritization problem. That's a discernment problem.

unknown 25:46

Good.

Sara Best 25:46

I like that. One of their skills. Yeah, me too. What are their skills?

John Broer 25:50

Well, what one of the other ones you mentioned before we hit record was and I and I love this emotional regulation. Yeah. Um we've had some stories clearly of managers clearly or leaders clearly lacking emotional regulation, but give us your perspective on that.

Emotional Regulation As Strategy

Neil Pretty 26:08

Uh, I think emotional regulation is something that is being taught less and less. Um, you know, I've certainly lost my cool on more than one occasion. You know, I'm I'm certainly not speaking about that from a perspective of perfection. It's actually from a perspective of imperfection and understanding the consequences of not being emotionally regulated. So leaders need to understand that things like having 40, 30 minute meetings a week. You know, that's not I was talking to a leader recently that that he said, I have 30-minute meetings every 30 minutes, eight hours a day, this entire week. This one meeting is 90 minutes and that's it. That is going to put you in a place where you can't be calm, can't be centered, can't respond in a way that's productive. And that's the essential part of it is, you know, like we're talking about psychological safety. You can set the stage for that, frame up work, you can create all the right conditions, and then you make it or break it with how you respond. Yep. So yeah, and like, and that's and when we're wired to see that immediately. So you can't get away with it, you can't fake it. So the being emotionally regulated allows you to actually respond with curiosity, which is a higher order level of thinking than just rote response. Yeah, okay, great, thanks. You know, like that, that's not good enough. And I think that's why it's so essential for leaders to focus on their emotional regulation. So, you know, when I was an early leader, I had someone say, you know, why don't you just count to 10? Well, I didn't really understand the value of counting to 10, and that wasn't long enough. There you go. Right. Right. I wasn't setting the conditions prior. I wasn't giving myself the opportunity prior. I wasn't dealing with at that time my ego and pride. You mentioned that earlier. So I can admit to that now that that's part of it was I felt like I was under attack all the time because I didn't feel secure in my role, secure in myself, secure in my position. So like these kinds of things are necessary to attend to. Not like I'm not saying everybody needs to go to therapy. There's not enough data to support that. But they do though. It's essential to it's it's a s yeah, but it's essential to consider your entire condition before putting yourself into a position where your emotional reaction could derail all of your better efforts.

John Broer 28:44

Oh, for sure.

Sara Best 28:45

So well said.

John Broer 28:47

It really is. And I Sarah, sorry, this just makes me think about now in our in our world, Neil, part of what we do at Real Good Ventures with talent optimization, leader development, psychological safety is such a has such a strong connection to the work, an area of expertise for Sarah on emotional intelligence. And the tools of emotional intelligence can be learned. Yeah. And without them, though, leaders will find themselves just burning out. Um, Sarah, this is I shouldn't be talking about this, but that's what made me think of it when uh Neil Fed said this is a skill that people need to develop.

Sara Best 29:26

I'm grateful, Neil, that you highlight the emotional regulation as an essential competency for leadership. I mean, we've we've long understood that um lack of awareness of emotion, emotional hijacking, over-responding to things. I mean, that's just the the surface level. You harm people when you do that, which is bad enough. But it's also physiologically what continues to happen in our bodies. And I cannot say enough about how we've acclimated to dysregulation as a human species. And we have never been in a time like this, at least I haven't in my lifetime, where you know, conflict continues to rise and, you know, the uncertainty of the future, this this total ground moving all the time sort of thing, it is what we're dealing with. I've heard it called ambient change or turbulent ambient change. Like it's just everywhere all the time. So I love that you highlight basically what I heard you say is look, if if you're gonna be in that role as a leader, this has to be the priority for you. It's the, you know, uh amplified, put your own mask on first, regulate yourself first. Otherwise, you cannot do your job. And you are with people who are dysregulated as well. That fight or flight response, you know, there's no access to creativity, innovation, connection when we are in lockdown mode and we're not aware of it. So I'm so glad that's important.

Intuition, 50-50 Calls, And Ownership

Neil Pretty 30:57

I think where the shift has really been for me in this is noticing that the way this is framed to leaders often makes them think that becoming emotionally intelligent or developing the skill of emotional regulation or you know, however it's framed often ends up landing in the camp of I need to become a therapist. I need to do this and be this for my people. I need to have the, you know, and that that's not at all what it's about. I was at the through a series of events, I ended up at the retirement party of the CEO of McKinsey. We're going back like 12 years ago now. And at the time I didn't really have the same understanding of it as I do now. But one of the things that was continuously complimented is people got up and did their toasts and speeches, and they complimented him on his capacity to make the right 50-50 decision. The further you go up in an organization, the more decisions are 50-50. We go this way or this way. The data looks like it's about even. Which way do I go? And you gotta go. And you you might be wrong. So you want to be in this update mindset so you can course correct if you if necessary. But what becomes the essential differentiating factor is access to your intuition. It's your emotional system, it's your EQ. How do you feel about this? Becomes a very relevant question because it helps complete reality. If you can say in a meeting, okay, this is the direction we're going, but how do you feel about it? All of a sudden, people will go, I don't know about this one component. You go, okay, great. Let's keep our eyes out for that. Because that might be something that that trips us up later. So that feeling gave you access to early warning signals of things going wrong. Now you've de-risked your decision. That's wonderful. You've set the stage for updating in the future. You've created the conditions for adaptation, all because you created the conditions for emotions to be part to be part of the conversation instead of separate from the conversation. So this isn't a therapy session. This is strategic. This is thoughtful. It's completing leadership. And not to mention, just from a very fundamental uh perspective, you engage people in followership if you're someone worth following. If you're flying off the handle every six seconds, nobody wants to follow you. You're too unpredictable.

Sara Best 33:50

You said something I it might have been Neil before we engaged uh in our podcast. It was about the problem after the problem. And and this is clicking in my head. It is often the case that um people, I know one situation, uh a CEO said something to um not her direct report, but somebody else in the organization. Something stinging, something, a one-liner, she kind of flew off the handle after receiving some news. So that one person, and others have had a similar experience, that one person like carries that with her every day. It colors everything she says or does in any meeting that she's in. Can you just put a bow around this? The problem after the problem, you know, that this is this person, by the way, this leader is kind of like, what what is preventing us from getting trust here? Like, we've been talking about this, we've been working on this, we don't feel it yet. In simple terms, what would you say to her about all this stuff?

Neil Pretty 34:55

You know, have you identified the problem? Yes. Do you uh agree that it's a problem? And do you feel like it's a problem worth solving? If you can answer those three questions, then you can move forward to solving the problem.

Sara Best 35:07

Well, the problem is that people don't say what they're supposed to say. They don't they're not saying what they're thinking.

Neil Pretty 35:12

Right. So I think in that case, the easy answer is go say sorry. Go take ownership. Ownership is not something that somebody can give you. You know, accountability responsibility is something somebody can give you. Accountability is something that you agree to in the process, it's a negotiated part. Um, and ownership is something you have to take for yourself. So ownership is in this case, that's where it it really lands. And if you've wrapped your whole life up around being right, that's a big mountain to climb.

John Broer 35:48

Sorry. Yes, it is. I was thinking of so many people when you said that, but go ahead, including myself. Go ahead. Sorry.

Sara Best 35:53

So that's helpful. Yeah.

John Broer 35:55

Great insights. And again, I mean, I get it, Neil. I get it's almost like you you're creating this uh framework to say this is why I wrote the book, because every single day leaders need to have access to this. And I and I really think that that was as we start to wrap up, that was one of the other points you wanted to hit about the work process, about the field guide itself. So take us down that path for a few minutes, just to help us understand the essential nature of the field guide.

Neil Pretty 36:26

Yeah. So, I mean, as you might guess, I sort of started off in a, you know, what you need to understand. Here's big picture. This is, you know, almost philosophically, but also I talk a little bit about neuroscience and those kinds of things, like some essential understanding of how the brain works is part of it. But that's a pretty small part of the book. I just wanted to make sure that it was named and there. And then I work through uh essential skills, tactics, day-to-day things that you're gonna have to deal with. And then some of the bigger picture pieces like facilitation, like decision-making processes, negotiation, these sort of things that don't come up necessarily minute to minute, but they come up often and they're part of the process of work. And if you can get them right, if you can get those critical moments right, work becomes so much easier. These the this the ambient chaos that you mentioned, Sarah, which I think is perfect. Like that, like the ambient change, ambient uncertainty, and like that becomes less of a big deal. And all of a sudden, work becomes less stressful and easier, higher functioning. And I think that's that's really, I don't know if I'm exactly answering the question the way you wanted me to, but but that's what the book walks through. Yeah. And then for culture architects, there's a whole segment of the book that's actually for culture architects. Like, how have we scaled this in organizations?

Inside The Field Guide: Tactics To Scale

John Broer 37:52

Well, and and I was actually referencing that. I'm looking at it right now because, and that is chapter six, being a culture, culture architect, but you do talk about um the key moments in critical conversations. I mean, you're breaking it down to the things that happen every single day that help to establish a stronger, healthier organization that um where the stigma of failure does not suppress everything. I I love that. When we got trained in uh the fearless organization scan, um just the question, how do you deal with failure on this team? And you know, when you get that flippant response of, oh, well, we don't fail around here, it's like, okay. I think I I think I have a pretty good understanding of how you're dealing with this. But that's what they need every single day, and that's what the field got is for. Go ahead. I I didn't mean to cut you off, but it it is broken down exactly like that.

Neil Pretty 38:47

Yeah, and I and I think and and it's broken down like that uh because that's how people ask for it when they're coming and talking to us, you know, uh, that's how I think about it. Um, you know, and I think for me, one of my biggest challenges is I tend to get like I I'm very theoretical and I can hear a theory and apply it broadly, but most people aren't like that. So I the work of the book for me was to break it down into these component parts that were chewable. And essentially, as a leader and as an organization, as a business, the fastest way to hire performance is subtractive thinking. Do less bad things, and that's that's the fastest way to get better.

John Broer 39:31

Yeah.

Neil Pretty 39:32

And these critical moments, these essential skills, this is a foundation. If you can get one or two of these elements right and have them not being wrong, you know, it's like all of a sudden an engine that has, you know, eight cylinders, you're running at six or five or four because there's a few that aren't firing properly. If you can just get them firing properly, all of a sudden you got a ton of power left. Ton of power.

Sara Best 40:03

That's like Santa Slay and Elf. Like in order for it to take off, it needed more engine power. And we're just saying to help that. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Neil Pretty 40:11

It's like you need to really get going. You need some of these essential things. And I think that's what I see a lot of as leaders just getting these really foundational basic things wrong. I mean, we call it the good driver problem. Um, there was a study done in the in the UK. 96% of drivers said that their driving was above average. And for those of you who are good at math out there, yeah, the math doesn't math.

John Broer 40:40

Right. Yeah. Right.

Neil Pretty 40:42

Right. So that's the problem is when we self-assess, we tend to assess ourselves higher.

John Broer 40:48

Oh my gosh, yes.

Neil Pretty 40:49

Right. Yeah. Leader leaders overestimate psychological safety 70% of the time or more. And it gets worse the more senior you are. You know, if you've read any research around the iceberg of truth, we get about executives get about four per 4% of truth at the top levels.

John Broer 41:06

Yeah.

Neil Pretty 41:07

This is the problem that we're really trying to attend to. And this is one of the problems when it comes to skill development, is that we're think we're good. Doesn't matter. Just try to do better, and and you'll do better.

John Broer 41:20

Neil, you remind me of break that down. Oh, sorry. You remind me of um, I'm sure you're familiar with Tasha Yurik and her work from Harvard around self-awareness. And we had her on a couple of years ago. She did a study, 5,000 subjects, asked the question, how many of you feel you are highly self-aware? Because I know I know in your book, you know, in chapter two, you talk about the elements to lead and then leading yourself. So self-awareness for us is central to effective, you know, leadership, man, be an effective manager, be a non-bosshole. But 95%, 95% said, Oh yeah, highly self-aware. And then when they went back and said, uh, and I the study, I mean, it's it's been well publicized, as it turns out, um, only 15%, one five.

Sara Best 42:08

That's 10 to 15%. Yeah.

John Broer 42:10

Yeah. Actually had any real sense of self-awareness. So the yeah, the the delusion is strong. Um, that's true.

Neil Pretty 42:20

Yeah, and John, we live in a society where uh mental health language is prevalent, but mental health skills are not.

John Broer 42:30

Correct.

Neil Pretty 42:31

We live in a leadership and organizational world where leadership language is prevalent, but leadership skills are not.

John Broer 42:41

Yep.

Neil Pretty 42:41

Yeah. And that is at the center of the book. I don't, I don't care how good you think you are, I'm not that good either. You know, like it's it's fine. We all have we all have work to do and have places where we can get better. And I think that what I want for everyone is to be a little bit more comfortable with that.

John Broer 43:00

Yes.

Neil Pretty 43:01

And ask not how good am I or how where am I? It's where might I want things to be better or different or more effective. And I don't care if I'm not that good at it. I can get better at it.

Self-Delusion, Data, And Doing Less Bad

Sara Best 43:12

That's really boils it down in a powerful way. And I I think I'm hoping it's something all of our listeners can embrace. You're human. Welcome to humanity. And you just happen to have a heap of responsibility on your shoulders, and you can't let your ego take over. You know, there's you can develop an update mindset, you can create um discernment skill, you can develop your capacity to discern, and you can figure out how to emotionally regulate. You got to do it. And if you do that, uh these things that are essential to have in the culture and in the environment for us to survive and thrive through this crazy time, it's going to be able to happen. This is good. This is a great work you did here. Thank you.

John Broer 43:54

Just a reminder to everybody go into the show notes. You will see a link to the book that you can order today. Because it published today, a link to Neil's original episode on the Boss Hole Chronicles, which was equally amazing, and also his LinkedIn profile. So go check it out. Neil, will you promise us to be back here when you write your next book?

Neil Pretty 44:18

Yes, I will. Yes, I will. It's already in the works.

Sara Best 44:23

You said there were two books in you.

Neil Pretty 44:24

Oh yeah.

John Broer 44:26

Awesome, man. We got a third one in the queue. That's awesome. That is great. This has been great, Neil. Thank you so much. And again, um, I appreciate you once more contributing to the Boss Hole Transformation Nation. It's helpful.

Neil Pretty 44:39

Yeah, I appreciate you guys a lot. It's like I said before the podcast, you guys are just you're you're so focused on service and bringing good things to uh uh uh the masses is in the best way you can. And uh I think service is essential to making making waves, so to speak. Make good things happen. So thank you. I appreciate it. Amen.

Sara Best 45:02

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, my friends, we'll see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles.

John Broer 45:12

Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here. And if you have your own bosshole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory at the bosshole chronicles.com. Again, my story at the bossholechronicles.com. We'll see you next time.